THE Band Room emanates the most unpredictable magic.

For Cerys Matthews, once the erratic pop queen of Catatonia now blossoming anew in rural Nashville motherhood, Saturday was the start of her autumn tour.

It was a warm-up not mentioned on her website, but a magnet to the first surprise of the night: her very vocal pack of Sapphic supporters.

Cerys, meanwhile, had parked up in a 12-seater tour bus bigger than the wooden hall. We waited outside, snaking down the hill as she went through an extensive soundcheck where that unmistakeable Cardiff birdsong travelled on the night air towards Kirkbymoorside.

Support act Alun Tan Lan sang entirely in Welsh - disappointingly the Welsh word for bicycle turned out to be bike - and when Cerys's American band emerged into the twinkling fairylights they had the look of hick farmboys unlikely to sleep before the morning milking session.

Cerys tucked her hair beneath a Sixties' peaked cap and sipped on the sweet Yorkshire nectar of a Black Sheep beer to bathe her voice through a gleeful set of ramshackle country beauty, roadhouse blues and sometimes chaotic, chugging rock that began, against all expectations, with Catatonia's valedictory lament, Godspeed.

No woman since Janis Joplin sings with such abandon, eyes in ecstasy, mouth so wide, voice untamed and wild, tender yet burning.

To round off a rowdy Saturday, curry for 20 from JB Spice arrived, and Cerys was last spotted carrying a child-booster seat to the monster bus. That's rock'n'roll, Band Room style.